Attorney General Eric Holder Contemplates Less Drug Prisoners

Attorney General Eric Holder thinks too many Americans are going to prison and will release some ideas for reform in the coming weeks, NPR reports.

“I think there are too many people in jail for too long and for not necessarily good reasons,” Holder told NPR.

Almost half of our 214,000 federal prisoners are incarcerated on drug charges, prompting Holder to tell NPR yesterday, “the war on drugs is now 30, 40 years old. There have been a lot of unintended consequences. There’s been a kind of decimation of certain communities in particular communities of color.”

Changes could include moving around the feds’ enforcement priorities, Holder states. Lawmakers are also floating the idea of giving judges more discretion when sentencing non-violent criminals subject to mandatory minimums.

Billions of dollars are being wasted annually on racially biased arrests, the ACLU finds. Blacks are 4.2 times as likely to be arrested for cannabis as whites, despite equal usage rates. Enforcing marijuana laws costs about $3.6 billion per year, the ACLU estimates.

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